Well, it’s December 20 already, soon be Christmas!
Apology, I’m a bit out of date. Today is indeed December 20, but only in the Julian calendar, which was phased out in 1582, and now time, in our new-fangled calendar, called the Gregorian, has galloped on to January 2.
The difference between the calendars was at first 11 days (to bring the spring equinox, on which the date of Easter deoends, back to March 21). The difference increased by a day each time there was a year with a Julian but not a Gregorian leap day: the years 1600 and 2000. So it’s now 13 days, and will next increase in 2100. 2099 Dec. 18 Julian will be 2100 Jan. 1 Gregorian. I hope there will be a whole fortnight of festivity.
It’s easy to get such things wrong, especially if, like me, you’re numerically illiterate, never sure of today’s date and having to do subtractions by counting on your fingers.
Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII. They commissioned the calendars named after them, but they weren’t the mathematicians who thought them out.
Another midwinter numerical curiosity is that the latest sunrise is yet to come, on January 4 (for latitude 40° north, at any rate), even though the shortest day, the solstice, was back on December 21. You can refer to our full discussion of this difference between the longest and shortest days and those that seem so if you watch the Sun rise or see it set.
Give us back our sanity
When the New Style calendar, that is, the Gregorian, was introduced in England, by omitting September 3-13 of 1752, mobs shouted “Give us back our eleven days!” Conspiracy theories, we’ve made fun of them before, and they continue to thrive like the virus.
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Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Regardless of the calendar date (Julian or Gregorian), in about an hour’s time the earth will be at perihelion. I don’t know that it calls for a great deal of celebration, but it’s worth noting.
Maybe Sir’s, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Smog (yes I know that they’re not Sir’s yet but the Queen doesn’t seem too fussy as to who she dishes out these titles too as long as they’re rich…. very rich)will bring the Julian Calendar back to England after all Sir Boris has just reintroduced weights and measures in none metric for those who prefer and a lot of the people who support him sadly will so prefer.Like climbing a sand dune one step forward two back!On an astronomical note I was walking back today at dusk and caught Venus very low and I only had my Zeiss Mini Quick 5×10 monocular with me and I was able to see the crescent 🌙 of Venus.Some have said that they have seen the crescent naked eye.I’m putting it in the catagory of the moon’s of Jupiter, Uranus and for those in the south Sigma Octantis …. maybe just?
A belated happy Gregorian New Year! Different cultures start the wheel of the year at different points. It’s good to mark at least one of them. Any excuse for a fresh start.
Here at 38 degrees north latitude, the earliest sunset fell on December 5; latest sunrise will be on 5 January. I think of the intervening month as the Yuletide.
By the way, it is wonderful to have the 2022 Astronomical Calendar in all its glory. Thank you. I printed it out in color, double-sided. My favorite page is the plan of the Moon’s movements projected on the plane of her orbit around the Earth.
That reminds me of when I was in Egypt in 1979. I was able to have two Christmases, as the Coptic church there uses the Julian Calendar, instead of the Gregorian, as Catholic popes have Ben excommunicated since the Great Schism.
Nice work Guy, as usual. Just one little gripe (not bad for a whole
year). There are no conspiracies mentioned in the Guardian article
linked right at the end. There is some abuse on show, true; in the
examples the abusers often explained the reason for their ire. The lack
of accountability, and the deceit in medical politics (or is that
political medicine?).
And of course the threat to assault children with an experimental gene
modifying vaccine that currently has recorded more deaths in the US
VAERS reporting system than all previous vaccines in its history
combined. Even some members of the JCV1 and FDA were resigning saying
there was no benefit for kids. And Prof Edmunds says we all need
boosters while also acknowledging (elsewhere) that they have not been
proved safe.
It’s not convenient for Ian Sample to allude to this; or any of the
studies that appeared since the middle of December showing how, and why,
the Omicron variant is likely to be much less serious than the Delta,
while these unaccountable modellers predict up to 4000 deaths a day and
tell us we’re all doomed without the vaccine.
So…these people with the restricted vocabulary feel threatened not
because of mad conspiracies, but by the information that is publicly
available – and the threats to them and their families. No one is
representing their concerns except the Guardian cartoonists, turning
them into something that is easy to dismiss.
Best wishes for 2022.
Walter Buchanan